There's an article today at abc.com that looks at recent trends around net-based pay-for services and the smattering of paywalls from News Corp to the NYT that are up or threatening to be put up, and speculating that this could be the beginning of a trend. Of course, a YouTube video rental site and a few large publishers putting up paywalls will make zero difference to the "free internet" on their own. But if they're successful, it could spark emulation. But could this be a trend that could snowball enough to change the nature of the net?

The reason for the dispair of the media companies at the moment is that nobody has figured out how to make advertising pay on the web; and they also haven't figured out how to make users pay.

Most users will never pay for anything on the net. Every time companies have tried pay-per-view, they've instantly lost memberships. Just ask Facebook.

In short; the system is strong enough to sheild itself from the threat outlined in the article

This is both good and bad. On the one hand it's great that the internet will remain mostly free.

On the other hand, very large media companies who have huge staff, and who spend bulk dollars on quality investigative journalism will go to the wall. This is unfortunate, and will mean lots of lost jobs, as well as a shortage of quality reporting, particularly those involving foreign correspondents.

But that's life, and new leaner companies will emerge to take their place. I imagine these new companies will not be tied down to the old tired practices of the behemoths they replace.

I would also like to think these companies (likely community based) will be less prone to the crazy political bias that you find with so many big media companies today (Take a bow: Fox News).